Hullabaloo is a series of hand-drawn animated short films currently in production. They're set in a Steampunk world occupied by the young inventor Veronica Daring, who comes home from her elite finishing school to find a nasty situation: her father has been kidnapped, and his captors plan to use his inventing genius for evil corporate ends. Daring tracks her father to the abandoned amusement Daring Adventures, where he used to test his inventions. There she meets a fellow inventor girl named Jules Fletcher, and they join forces to take down the villains. But the bad guys' wealth and influence are great, too much to let them be challenged directly. But an alias should provide them cover, so Veronica takes on the secret identity "Hullabaloo", a goggled hero who pledges to use technology for good and uses science to take down evil.
The Hullabaloo shorts represents an effort by Disney veteran animators to preserve the art of hand drawn animation. Their goal is to reignite public interest in traditional animation again, which has long fallen wayside during the past decade while computer generated animation has dominated. Each of the artists have worked on Disney and Dreamworks Animation films such as Tarzan, The Lion King (1994), The Emperor's New Groove, Kung Fu Panda, The Incredibles, and Frozen. Their biggest hope is that Hullabaloo is approved for adapting in a feature-length film, and that through it hand drawn animation can have a place in the film industry again.
There are four shorts currently planned: The Great Race, Curse of the Cheshire Cat, The Mysterious Island, and Ask The Professor. Their campaign for funding started on August 27, 2014 on Indiegogo and ended on October 2nd funded to more than 500 percent of their original $80,000 goal. You can view their (closed) Indiegogo campaign HERE
, check out their animation tests on their YouTube channel HERE, and visit their website HERE.
The first episode released on November 24, 2023.
Not to be confused with the ABC pop music show from The '60s.
Tropes found in Hullabaloo include:
- Amusement Park of Doom: Daring Adventures used to be a bustling amusement park where Jonathan Daring displayed and tested his inventions, but it has since become an abandoned ruin. It's there where Veronica first meets Jules.
- Aside Glance: In The Great Race Veronica gives a brief one while pouring water into her car's steam engine, as if to confirm to the viewer that, yes, this is a steampunk car.
- Bait-and-Switch: When adult Veronica is introduced in The Great Race, she stumbles into a saloon in an Old West desert town desperately asking for water. Once given a glass, rather than drinking it, she runs outside with it, then returns for a second one. The curious bar patrons step outside to find her pouring the water into the radiator of her car.
- Big Bad: J.D. Snickerbottom, that nefarious fellow.
- Cool Car: In The Great Race, Veronica drives the Victoria Special, a combustion/steam engine hybrid "motorized carriage". Jules drives the Marauder, a diesel/steam engine hybrid.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: J.D. Snickerbottom, who invents things only for the money and is willing to kidnap more talented inventors to pass off their machines as his own.
- Dastardly Whiplash: In an explicit throwback to them. Guess who?
- Flying Car: In The Great Race just when it looks like Veronica's about to fall into a chasm, the Victoria Special deploys wings and takes to the skies. Unfortunately, it overheats and Veronica has to parachute out before it crashes.
- Inadvertent Entrance Cue: In The Great Race, a guy in a saloon is telling another about a woman he lost. His friend says that it's not likely that a woman like that would just walk through the door. At that moment, Veronica bursts into the saloon, asking for water.
- It's Personal: Both played straight and averted. For Veronica, her goal is to save her kidnapped father. For Jules, her goal is to get a closer look at those dimensional parallax machine plans of his.
- Law of Inverse Recoil: Veronica is handed an experimental plasma raygun by Jules, who warns her that "it's got a kick!" One shot, and it blasts her right out and off of the zeppelin they're on.
- Minor Kidroduction: The Great Race opens with a flashback to Veronica as a little girl, as her father shows her the plans for his latest invention — an internal combustion engine.
- Obviously Evil: Pictured: Totally not the villain of "Hullabaloo"◊.
- Steampunk: Is set in such a world. As it's animated in a near-Disney style by animators who've worked there, it could be considered an honorary steampunk Disney film. (Joining Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet.)
- Diesel Punk: A touch of it with Jules, whose diesel-powered race car in The Great Race is unlike the other steampunk models there.
- Tea Is Classy: After ejecting from her flying car, prim and proper Veronica parachutes down while holding a cup of tea.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Veronica is more ladylike and proper, while Jules is outspoken and aggressive. Their opposing personalities can easily◊ be seen by their outfits◊.
- Trapped in the Past: It's implied that Jules Fletcher may be a stranded time traveler, due to her modernized fashion sense, her pop culture references that make no sense to Veronica, and her suspicious interest in Mr. Daring's plans to build a dimensional parallax time-machine.
- Values Resonance / Deliberate Values Dissonance: Jules' sensibilities resemble a modern woman's while Veronica's are more Victorian. For instance, Veronica wears a bustle underneath her dress while Jules refuses to.
- Unfortunate Names: J.D. has a hard time being taken seriously with a last name like Snickerbottom. Laugh at it at your own risk.
